Ben Bova - Voyagers

“What if there’s a crew aboard?” Thompson mused. “Our own spacecraft have worked better when astronauts were aboard to repair malfunctions.”

“But it’s the blasted time factor that makes all these arguments so difficult,” Cavendish insisted. “If you have a spacecraft traveling from one star to another it would take so many centuries that the crew would have to be prepared to spend its entire life on the ship…plus the lives of its children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—dozens of whole generations, don’t you see?”

“Not if the ship could fly at the speed of light, or close to it,” Stoner said.

“Relativistic effects,” Thompson muttered. “Time dilation.”

“Not bloody likely,” Cavendish countered. “And your own observations show it poking along at a rather sedate speed, actually, more like your Voyager and Mariner probes.”

Thompson finished his cup and got to his feet. “Well, one thing’s for sure. Whichever way you look at it, the damned thing is impossible.”

“But it’s there,” said Stoner.

“Ahh,” Cavendish said with a growing smile. “That’s what makes science interesting, isn’t it?”

TOP SECRET

Memorandum

TO: Lt. R. J. Dooley, U. S. Naval Intelligence

FROM: Capt. G. V. Yates, NATO/HQ

SUBJECT: Security clearance, Prof. Roger H. T. Cavendish, FRS, FIAC, OBE, PhD.

1. Prof. Cavendish holds security clearances up to and including TOP SECRET from British Army, Royal Scientific Establishment, and NATO. See attached documentation.

2. Latest security check was concluded 24 Aug 80.

3. Initial security clearance was granted Cavendish 15 Dec 59 after his repatriation from USSR in 1957. He was a POW in Burma, later Manchuria, and then taken into custody by Soviet troops at end of WWII. He remained in USSR voluntarily until 1957, when repatriated to UK.

4. British MI suspected Cavendish as a Soviet agent, but repeated checks of his activities have uncovered no suspicious activities. Consequently he has been cleared up to and including TOP SECRET.

5. Conclusion: If Cavendish is a Soviet agent, he is a “deep agent,” assigned to do nothing for many years, until he has penetrated to a position of high trust and responsibility. Project JOVE may be that position.

TOP SECRET

Walking along the gravel path that skirted the long rows of silvery radio telescope antennas, Kirill Markov pulled his fleece hat down over his tingling ears and reflected on how much of the Russian spirit is shaped by the Russian climate.

A melancholy people in a bleak land that suffers a dreary climate, he told himself.

He stopped and surveyed the scene. Endless vistas of flat, snow-covered country, with hardly a hillock to break the monotony. Heavy, dull gray clouds pressing down like the hand of a sullen god. A cold wind moaning constantly, without even a tree to catch it and offer a lighter, cheerier sound.

Why did they have to build this research station out here in the steppes? Why not by the Black Sea, where the commissars have their summer dachas and the sun shines once in a while?

He shook his head. Admit it, old boy. If you were getting somewhere with this puzzle they’ve handed you, you wouldn’t mind the scenery or the climate so much.

It was the truth. The radio pulses had him stymied. If they were a language, or even a code, he had not been able to make the slightest dent in it during the months he’d been working on the problem.

Wearily, he turned in his tracks and started trudging back toward his living quarters. The wind tugged at his long overcoat. His feet were freezing.

And the radio pulses were as much a mystery to him as they had been when he had first tackled the problem.

He was walking past the gray cinder block of the administration building when Sonya Vlasov’s bright, high voice caught him.

“There you are, Kir! I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

Inwardly he groaned. Sonya had been an easy conquest, if conquest was the correct word to use with someone so willing. Willing? She was demanding. Markov had a notion that their long nights together in bed had something to do with his inability to crack the Jovian puzzle. She was young, frighteningly energetic, athletic and more inventive than a team of Chinese acrobats.

She rushed up and grabbed his arm. “Have you forgotten that the laboratory director has invited you to tea this afternoon?”

It was already getting dark. The lights atop the buildings and along the paths had been switched on. Markov felt cold and utterly bleak deep inside his soul. Incredibly, Sonya was smiling, bouncy and coatless. She wore nothing more than a sweater, loose-fitting slacks and boots.

Her sweater was not loose-fitting, though, and despite himself Markov felt a tiny glow within. He smiled down at Sonya’s round, happy face.

“Yes, I had quite forgotten about the invitation. Where would I be without you?”

She laughed. “In bed with one of the other girls. They’re all very jealous of me, you know.”

“Ah, my angel of mercy,” he said, sliding an arm across her shoulders. “You are too kind to me. After all, I’m a doddering old man…”

“You are not!”

“Well, middle-aged, then,” he said as they headed toward the wood-frame building where his room was. “There are so many younger men who are sighing and moaning for a chance to bask in your smile. Yet you concentrate all your energies on me.”

And come to think of it, he added mentally, there are indeed other women who’ve been kept away from me by this over-developed sex maniac.

But Sonya would have none of it. She was single-minded in her devotion to Markov. And, sure enough, he ended up making love to her again before he started out for the director’s tea. It came as no surprise to him. As he lay half dozing in her soft, ample breasts, he found himself trying to count how many times he had done it over the past two months.

I must be close to a world record for a man approaching fifty years of age, he marveled.

The director’s tea was very private, very quiet, and mercifully brief. Markov chatted amiably about his studies of oriental languages while the rest of the men and women talked about astronomy and electronics. He didn’t understand them and they didn’t understand him. No one spoke about the radio pulses from Jupiter, because they were supposed to be a secret that only a half-dozen people in the entire station knew about. And no one knew who, among the two dozen guests at the tea, might be reporting conversations back to Moscow.

Markov wasn’t hungry by the time the partygoers bade farewell to their host and headed for their own quarters. He trudged listlessly past the cafeteria building and headed to his room. Sonya would be there, waiting in bed for him.

Maybe she’ll be asleep, Markov hoped. Then he frowned to himself. A fine state of affairs! You’re actually afraid of her. It’s time you told her that you’re a married man and you can’t carry on with her any longer.

He thought of the lean, languid blond electronics specialist he had met at the director’s tea. Big, sleepy eyes. She’d be more restful, at least.

It was a considerable surprise when he opened the door to his room and found his wife sitting in the chair in front of the electric heater.

“Maria!”

She looked up at him, the usual scowl on her face.

Markov glanced at the bed. It was unmade, but empty.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, closing the door behind him and wondering what had happened to Sonya.

“I’ve come for a firsthand report on your progress,” she said. “My superiors thought that I would like to see my husband after a two-month absence.”